Google passes search milestone

Google now accounts for more than two-thirds of searches in the US, according to the latest research.

Every month, The Nielsen Company publishes data on the state of the search engine market. And its new figures show that Google accounted for 67.3 per cent of all US search queries in December 2009, up from 65.4 per cent a month earlier.

However, there was bad news for the company’s two main rivals. Yahoo tumbled 1.1. per cent to 13.3 per cent in the Nielsen ratings while Bing fell 0.8 per cent to 9.9 per cent. In particular, the dramatic decline for Microsoft’s search engine will come as a shock to many search marketers who have watched it steadily gain users since launching in June 2009.

Is Google Chrome a factor?

One possibility is that users have been swayed by the respective ad campaigns of Microsoft and Google. To support the launch of Bing, Microsoft was believed to have set aside a marketing and advertising budget of £60.89 million. But Google subsequently responded with a high-profile ad campaign on TV, billboards and the internet to promote its new browser Chrome. In the default settings, Google is the homepage of Chrome.

Mark Baker, online marketing manager at theEword, argued that the browser is an important part of the company’s overall strategy. “These figures show that Google is strengthening its grip on the search engine market,” he said. “The fact that more people are making the switch to Chrome can only be a good thing for Google search.”